National Health Service: Key Targets

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have in place to ensure the National Health Service meets its key targets.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Markham) (Con)]

The NHS has made progress against its targets, especially given the challenges of recovering from Covid-19, the changing demography and winter pressures. The Government recognise that there is still a way to go and are working non-stop to support the NHS to do better. I take this opportunity to thank all NHS staff for their hard work to improve performance this winter.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I would like to join in thanking NHS staff, who are doing a fantastic job. There are some structural problems here. In particular, I am concerned about ambulance response times, which are causing a great deal of concern despite the Government having increased the category 2 call response times from 18 minutes to 30 minutes. Category 2 calls deal with such life-threatening events as strokes and heart attacks, so this is deeply worrying. What are His Majesty’s Government doing to reduce the response time? Will they consider returning to the 18-minute response time for category 2 calls?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I agree with the basic point, as I am sure all noble Lords will, that ambulances are on the front line and are the most important service in all of this. That is why we have invested in 800 new ambulances, with over £200 million of funding. It is early days, but that is starting to take effect. Regarding the category 2 issue, we have managed to halve the time it takes since last year, but it is still too long and we absolutely need to make more progress in this area.